The sheer scale of the explosives cache seized by anti terrorist police in London early yesterday will surprise and dismay the vast majority on this island which yearns for peace. It is abundantly clear that the Provisionals still appear intent on waging war - of inflicting death, injury and destruction - even as they talk of peace. The pain and the destruction of Canary Wharf and Manchester were about to be visited on another British city, on other British citizens.
Although the full circumstances of the arrests - and the fatal shooting which accompanied it - are still unclear, the British police will view the operation as a significant breakthrough against the IRA. Clearly, this was an operation - like an earlier seizure of bomb-making equipment in London last July - that was based on the highest grade intelligence. The old enmities and territorial feuds between the Metropolitan Police and the security services, which so inhibited the fight against the IRA in the past, appear to have been put to one side. The capacity of the Provisional IRA to recover from these setbacks should not, of course, be underestimated but yesterday's events will encourage all who are engaged in the long, painstaking battle against terrorism.
The scale of the explosives find in London may also serve to dampen down the recent intense speculation about a renewed IRA ceasefire. Certainly, it is difficult to discern much in the way of a coherent strategy in the Provisional movement. Mr Gerry Adams portrays himself on The Late Late Show as a peacemaker who is impatient for a lasting peace; Mr Martin McGuinness declares that the current phase of the peace process is over and makes the case for the "reconstruction" of a completely new peace process. And, all the while, their brothers in arms in the IRA are busy planning new outrages on British streets. It is, as the British Prime Minister, Mr Major, noted yesterday, "becoming impossible to reconcile Sinn Fein's rhetoric of peace with the IRA's preparation for murder".
The question now is whether there remains grounds to support the recent surge of optimism about a renewed IRA ceasefire. The Taoiseach's recent remarks in Washington are not the only pointer towards peace; security sources continue to be broadly optimistic about a restoration of the ceasefire. It is clear that there are now very deep divisions about strategy in the IRA and Sinn Fein, which no amount of obfuscation from Mr Adams and his companions can conceal. As our Security Correspondent writes in today's editions, there is a clear danger that these internal divisions could generate further instability and more violence.
The task facing the Sinn Fein leadership now is unchanged from that which faced it in August 1994, to make the case for peace, to sets one's face against a continuation of a bloody and futile war. Each successive act of violence like that which has now been mercifully averted in London adds another layer of difficulty to the immense task facing those involved in the attempt to build a negotiated settlement on this island.